The Hollywood Reporter came out with an article, ranking states as the best states to film Narrative Feature Films. It’s not surprising that California was ranked #1 and New York as #2. These have been top two from the beginning of the film industry.
You might be interested to know that up to the 50’s and 60’s, Utah ranked #3 as the most filmed state, right behind California and New York. This was because of all the westerns being filmed at the time. Many of these movies came to Utah to film.
At this time in the industry, it was still the norm to film on stages, which were only in California and New York. It was rare, though growing at the time, to start to film on location. If you didn’t need to leave the control of a stage, you didn’t. You only filmed on location if you needed a location that was very specific. Utah had that specific western look.
Unfortunately, as state tax incentive programs became available and the number of westerns declined, Utah started to drop in its ranking. As of last year, when we did a study ourselves for investor, Utah was #13. We had dropped to #18 a few years earlier (2008), but thank goodness the industry here in Utah is coming back.
It’d be great to see Utah get back to #3 (or higher) as a state that is Narrative Feature Film friendly. With everything the Studio, the Utah Film Commission and the Motion Picture Association of Utah, are currently working on (not necessarily together as partners) the State should start to make its comeback.
As we move forward with our plans, we’ll keep y’all updated on what’s going on.